Posted on 03/25/2006 10:50:56 PM PST by cgk
Mexican government fines Sheraton Hotel for expelling Cubans
The Sheraton Maria Isabel Hotel, located at Mexico City's Angel of Independence monument, kicked out 16 Cuban officials attending a Feb. 2 meeting with U.S. oil executives after receiving a warning from the Treasury Department that it was in danger of violating a four-decade trade embargo against the regime of Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Mexico's Foreign Relations Department said the hotel violated national commerce laws, which bar companies from discriminating against customers because of their nationality.
Officials at the New York-based Starwood Hotels & Resorts Inc, which owns the hotel, did not return calls placed after hours on Friday.
The February expulsion provoked an angry response from officials in Havana and Mexican lawmakers who said the United States was interfering in other countries' domestic affairs.
In February, the National Foreign Trade Council, which represents hundreds of U.S. businesses, wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary John Snow urging the department not to continue putting companies in such a difficult position.
The Treasury Department responded saying that it was not considering any changes in its enforcement activities.
The trade embargo against Cuba began in 1963 when Cuba was added to a list of countries covered by the 1917 Trading with the Enemy Act. The law prohibits U.S. citizens and U.S. companies from doing business with countries on the list, although Congress has since made exceptions for cash sales of food and other agricultural products to Cuba.
They're busy throwing 16 Cuban officials out of the US-owned Mexico City Sheraton for meeting with US oil executives, thereby violating a 40 year old embargo against the Communist nation.
Cubans LEGALLY in an American Sheraton in Mexico = BAD.
Mexicans in AMERICA ILLEGALLY = (crickets).
Contrast and compare:
Bump!!!
Does the American government have any business advising American companies operating in Mexico to violate that country's laws?
You are assuming the hotel is owned by the United States government. If I, as an American owned a hotel in Mexico (God forbid) I might want to deny service to short, fat, bald, left-handed Swedes.
Your really screwed no matter what, no matter what your getting censured. Either by the Commerce department or the counterpart of some foreign government.
But at the end of the day, it has just become a cost of doing business, sort of like FedEx and parking tickets.
This stupid embargo has done nothing but incubate Castro from the outside world for the last 43 years, without the embargo communism in Cuba would have collapsed years ago.
And when it does finally end, the US will have been frozen out of the market as the country will be owned by the Europeans, Canadians and Asians.
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